Could the multiverse really exist?

abstract: Something that exists as an idea or thought but not concrete or tangible (touchable) in the real world. Beauty, love and memory are abstractions; cars, trees and water are concrete and tangible.

Big Bang: The rapid expansion of dense matter and space-time that, according to current theory, marked the origin of the universe. It is supported by astronomers’ current understanding of the composition and structure of the universe.

cosmic: An adjective that refers to the cosmos — the universe and everything within it.

cosmology: The science of the origin and development of the cosmos, or universe. People who work in this field are known as cosmologists.

doppelgänger: A German term for someone that has a spiritual double, or counterpart. It’s not a ghost, because these exist for living individuals. The English language has borrowed the term to refer to someone’s “double” — a person who visually resembles them so well that they easily could be mistaken for them.

electron: A negatively charged particle, usually found orbiting the outer regions of an atom; also, the carrier of electricity within solids.

fabric: Any flexible material that is woven, knitted or can be fused into a sheet by heat or compression and drying.

fluctuation: (v. fluctuate) Some type of change in a pattern or signal that varies at irregular intervals and often by amounts that are hard to predict.

force: Some outside influence that can change the motion of an object, hold objects close to one another, or produce motion or stress in a stationary object.

galaxy: A group of stars — and usually invisible, mysterious dark matter — all held together by gravity. Giant galaxies, such as the Milky Way, often have more than 100 billion stars. The dimmest galaxies may have just a few thousand. Some galaxies also have gas and dust from which they make new stars.

gravity: The force that attracts anything with mass, or bulk, toward any other thing with mass. The more mass that something has, the greater its gravity.

mass: A number that shows how much an object resists speeding up and slowing down — basically a measure of how much matter that object is made from.

media: A term for the ways information is delivered and shared within a society. It encompasses not only the traditional media — newspapers, magazines, radio and television — but also digital outlets, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp. The newer, digital media are sometimes referred to as social media. The singular form of this term is medium.

multiverse: A term to connote the idea that our universe may be one of many (perhaps an infinite number of alternative universes) and that different things may happen in each.

novel: Something that is clever or unusual and new, as in never seen before.

parallel: An adjective that describes two things that are side by side and have the same distance between their parts. In the word “all,” the final two letters are parallel lines. Or two things, events or processes that have much in common if compared side by side.

particle: A minute amount of something.

physics: The scientific study of the nature and properties of matter and energy. Classical physics is an explanation of the nature and properties of matter and energy that relies on descriptions such as Newton’s laws of motion. Quantum physics, a field of study that emerged later, is a more accurate way of explaining the motions and behavior of matter. A scientist who works in such areas is known as a physicist.

quantum mechanics: A branch of physics dealing with the behavior of matter on the scale of atoms or subatomic particles.

scenario: A possible (or likely) sequence of events and how they might play out.

spacetime: A term made essential by Einstein’s theory of relativity, it describes a designation for some spot given in terms of its three-dimensional coordinates in space, along with a fourth coordinate corresponding to time.

superposition: (in quantum physics) The ability of some minute subatomic-scale particle to be more than one place at the same time. It has to do with particles in the quantum world having the weird capacity to exist in all possible states (or positions) at once.

telescope: Usually a light-collecting instrument that makes distant objects appear nearer through the use of lenses or a combination of curved mirrors and lenses. Some, however, collect radio emissions (energy from a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum) through a network of antennas.

theory: (in science) A description of some aspect of the natural world based on extensive observations, tests and reason. A theory can also be a way of organizing a broad body of knowledge that applies in a broad range of circumstances to explain what will happen. Unlike the common definition of theory, a theory in science is not just a hunch. Ideas or conclusions that are based on a theory — and not yet on firm data or observations — are referred to as theoretical. Scientists who use mathematics and/or existing data to project what might happen in new situations are known as theorists.

unique: Something that is unlike anything else; the only one of its kind.

universe: The entire cosmos: All things that exist throughout space and time. It has been expanding since its formation during an event known as the Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million years).

wormhole: (in physics) A tunnel or bridge formed by the warping of spacetime that would allow objects to take a shortcut path between two distant places in space and time. Although none has yet been witnessed, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted that they could exist.